- Read Cabell's review or Cats.
Cats stars James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson and introduces Royal Ballet principal dancer Francesca Hayward in her feature film debut.
Cats is in theaters on December 20th, 2019.
A tribe of cats must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. Now before I even start the review, I just wanted to note that the last sentence you read is the full synopsis in its entirety.
Cats is directed by Tom Hooper (director of “The Danish Girl” and “Les Misérables”) and I really did not enjoy it. Right from the get go, I am going to say what I did like in this movie. Surprisingly, Taylor Swift’s performance as Bombalurina was the one and only performance that I liked. The coloring was absolutely beautiful. I also thought the set design looked very good.
Now to start with what did not work for me in this film, I am going to address what everyone has been talking about. The appearance of the cats. While I was optimistic when I first watched the trailer, I will admit that they do look pretty rough. Weather it’s make up or CGI, I just find that they look incredibly unnatural and it throws you off. Especially when you are seeing humans as cats in a cat sized set, it really shows that this film should not have been translated to film.
To jump into the story telling, this story is way too simple to be as boring as it was. Like after the first fifteen minutes still being in the same scene, I got pretty board. I believe this was because they treated this film as a play. Also speaking of the play, there is a very low amount of dialogue in this film and some incredibly underdeveloped characters.. There are also way too many stand out awful scenes in this film including James Corden’s (previously seen in “Into The Woods” and “Trolls”) introduction and Rebel Wilson’s (previously seen in “Pitch Perfect” and “Bridesmaids”) scene which was especially gross (involving eating cockroaches). Also, this film is very predictable, the payoffs came off way too weak and it probably has the most forgettable villain of the year.
One of the things I was looking forward to most in this movie was the soundtrack. And just like the storytelling, it is just boring. Almost the whole script is spoken to you in a rhythmic way to disguise itself as music. And both the soundtrack and score are incredibly all over the place, jumping from Jazz to Classical, to “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” style music (I kid you not), to even Hip-Hop. Throughout the movie, songs will also reprise numerous times making you grow incredibly tired of them quite quickly. Trust me, after thirty minutes of this movie you will have “Jellicle Cats” ingrained in your head.
Lastly to mention the acting. I will say that it seems like some supporting actors (specifically Ian McKellen) looked like they were having a good time on set. But there is a lot of over acting and some very strange cat performances. The ballet/dance numbers were also not that exciting to watch. I also had no emotional attachment to the lead character.
So all in all, this movie is awful. It is a Broadway show, that should not have been as faithfully translated to film. The storytelling is very weak and unclear, the acting is very strange and the music just is not good. Please don’t waste your time watching this.
Rating: 1.25 out of 5
Cabell (Senior Contributor) is a filmmaker from Tampa, Florida. He will watch just about any film but when he's not reviewing the latest hits he spends time directing films of his own.Click Here to check out Cabell's Articles.